The bloke ho I spoke to in gosh told me they had to contact the publishers themselves to start selling Phoenix so it sounds like Phoenix haven't tried to sell it to comic shops yet just to waitrose a shop in which I had never entered into until last week and now thanks to gosh I won't be going I to again. Maybe Phoenix should try forbidden planet seeing as it always sells out in gosh & FP is the only shop that reg stocks partwork collections so they get a lot of customers that wouldn't normally go into their shop.

Swayed by the hype and not having a Waitrose near me (and with the doubt that they may not even have it), I thought about subscribing. But it seems you can only get it from the present issue and not backdate (I would want to get it from issue 1).

Issue 5 came in the post today, along with the binder. There's enough strings in it for about 6 months worth. When it's full it will be slightly thicker than just-pre-WW1 Chums volumes. But then again Chums was rather thinner

I managed to get issues 1-6 of the Phoenix at Waitrose in Beckenham (sorry I took the last first issue).

I must admit, I am impressed. The strips that caught my eye were The Pirates of Pangaea, Jamie's Bunny vs Monkey and my favourite - the Etherington Brothers' Long Gone Don (I was almost tempted to take out a subscription so I could see what happens to Don).

The Phoenix is has all the makings of becoming a great comic and as a kid, I would loved to have had it. I wish them all the best.

Happy though I am to finally hear news of a Waitrose relatively local to me carrying the comic, that's actually rather further for me to travel than to go to Gosh.

Then again, I have limited experience of the Barnet area, but I assume its streets have a reduced likelihood of people approaching you and trying to sell you prostitutes, as happened to me in Soho last Saturday. (She said it was "a women's-run organisation", so I suppose that makes it all right then.)

colcool007 wrote:

Read the last episode of Starborn.

Erm, I thought it was a one-off?

colcool007 wrote:

Also liked Gordon's (?) Garden

Gary's, after (I assume) Gary Northfield.

I'm still wondering what the point of having a special "This week only!" spot on every front cover is, when many of the one-off stories haven't appeared in it. Starborn, for example, was given the main picture instead, as were Cogg and Sprokit - and in both cases Corpse Talk was rather desperately substituted.

Bunny Versus Monkey is getting better - I liked this week's episode best of all the ones so far. Tale Feathers, too, was unusually gripping - while the extracts from books don't have a perfect record, they're doing better than the "exclusives", which have been uniformly dull. The Pirates of Pangaea, initially a strip I wasn't really sure about, is also maturing. By contrast, Long Gone Don and Star Cat are starting to show signs of struggling to live up to their early promise. The Lost Boy is still suffocating from its policy of strictly no more than one event of plot relevance per two pages. The advice dispensed by How to Make (Awesome) Comics is turning out to be unexpectedly practical - I particularly enjoyed last week's demonstration/demolition of narrative structure.

At least the Phoenix isn't standing still, which is a good thing, especially in a comic bound up with so many long-running serials which physically need to appear in every issue (the Lost Boy is scheduled to end in issue 35!).

_________________Help! Help! We're being held prisoner in a signature factory!

The Phoenix is honestly the highlight of my week at the moment - you have no idea how excited I get on Saturdays.

The best stories at the moment in the Phoenix are easily Long Gone Don, Star Cat and Gary's Garden however I also see big potential in Planet of the Shapes and Bunny VS. Monkey.

I'm beginning to see a similarity in Corpse Talk - luckily this story is saved because it's very interesting and amazingly manages to only be 1 page despite having something like 30 panels in it!

Pirates of Pangaea is good - I really like it - it's getting very exciting now! Although I began getting excited when the Bosun got killed. I wasn't expecting it and it really made me realise the danger they were in.

I also hate Captain Brookes.

I like The Lost Boy - I think Kate Brown is a fantastic artist and the colours she's used are incredible. I've realised I don't actually like the main character too much though - he's very greedy! I'm intrigued and slightly scared by the shadow character lurking around though...

The Phoenix Feature Special Lengths are in interesting, here's how I'd rate them...7th: Starborn6th: The Legend of the Golden Feather5th: The Princess and the Peanut Butter Sandwiches 4th: Zom-Bee3rd: Ghost Ant2nd: Cogg and Sprokit1st: The Apprentice

I loved The Apprentice (Ben Haggarty and John Welding) the most - I thought the story was really clever and worked really ell with the extra pages. The worst was Starborn which was the dullest read of my entire life - nothing happened until the end and that was waaaay too rushed.

I like Elsewhere quite a lot - I don't understand its purpose but Chris Riddell's artwork and imagination is incredible.

Von Doogan is a good idea and I've actually enjoyed doing the puzzles and they really keep you on the page for a long time - the puzzles are evil (yet fun)!

Lucie is probably the worst story in there - sorry Simone Lia. No particular reason - I just find it very poor.

I also can't stand the Tale Feathers. I can't even read them any more - I just get too bored - I want to read the comic strips after it and I get impatient. Maybe I'm just a bit lazy...

I'm excited for Issue 13 - the return of Good Dog, Bad Dog by Dave Shelton - hurrah! Also can't wait for the new strip by Sarah McIntyre and Philip Reeve. Oh, and The Pie Thief. That looks to be great!

The only problem is there's not too much in the Phoenix what with all the filler like Big News, Little News, The Fanfare and so on... I know it's crucial to have them in there but I find there's not actually too much comic strip in the Phoenix... Maybe they should remove the Tale Feathers and add a new two page adventure strip... The comic certainly needs more adventure...

I'm just about to start reading The Phoenix from issue 1 to issue 8. I haven't yet bought any more. My £10 for 5 issues got me issues 2 to 6, as you may recall, and I bought issue 1 direct from the company for £2.99, reluctantly because I assumed I had already bought it with my subscription. After three or four weeks there was no sign of it so I rang up to ask how long I was likely to have to wait for it. The lady who took my call was very efficient. She discovered that it had definitely been dispatched and that I should have received it at least a week earlier. She said she would have another copy sent out to me that very day, and as a tangible apology she would add issues 7 and 8 to my subscription free of charge. Credit where it is due, and I would like to thank her publicly. All three arrived on schedule but still no sign of the original issue 1. So, in one sense at least, Lew Stringer's comment that the company should send me a couple of freebies, given the irony that Phoenix was the first to discover that The Phoenix wasn't even featured on Waitrose's computer system, has actually come true.

I meant to draw attention to something I don't recall having been mentioned so far. It relates to a discrepancy between the front covers of issues 4 and 5 of The Phoenix, as presented in the full-page ad on the rear cover of issue 1, and the actual covers when they were issued. The ad itself had also been amended by the time issue 2 was published. Does anybody know why it was felt that these designs needed adjustment?

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